Welcome to Hyperion Records, an independent British classical label devoted to presenting high-quality recordings of music of all styles and from all periods from the twelfth century to the twenty-first.

Hyperion offers both CDs, and downloads in a number of formats. The site is also available in several languages.

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You must be bold and swiftly catch your prey, already I hear footsteps behind us in the night, quickly leap up onto my horse and kiss me as we elope, my wild lovely child. Make haste, for Death is fleet of foot.

Can you not hear the brooks running amongst the stones and flowers to the silent woodland lakes where the marble statues stand in fair solitude? Softly from the mountains, awakening age-old songs, wondrous night descends, and the valleys gleam again, as you often imagined in dreams.

Do you know the flower that has blossomed in the moonlit valley? From its half-open bud young limbs have flowered forth, white arms, red lips, and the nightingales are singing, and all around a lament is raised, ah, wounded to death with love, for the lovely days now lost— Come, ah come to the silent valley!

Soldiering is dangerous, studying very arduous, poetry’s sweet and graceful, the poet’s a figure of fun in these barbarous times. Most of all I’d like to ride, a good sword at my side, a lute in my right hand, with a student’s heart for the fight. Life is an untamed steed, its hooves striking sparks, the truly bold man will tame it, and where it treads it resounds!

Once, when travelling by night over land, I met a little boy, in his hand he held a gun and aimed at me most frighteningly. Provoked, I rush at him in a mighty rage, the impish boy fires, I fall flat on my nose. But he laughs in my face for having shot me. Cupid was the wretch’s name— I was greatly vexed.

Farewell, my sweet, you never loved me, I was too lowly for you. One night you’ll wander by moonlight and hear sweet music. A mermaid is singing, the night is mild, the silent clouds drift by. Then think of me and my mermaid wife, and find yourself another!

Farewell, you troopers, musketeers! We ride on wild horses that rear and almost somersault before many a mountain castle. The merman, lit by lightning, looms up on dark nights, the shark snaps, the gull shrieks— What a merry skirmish!

Just stretch out your lazy limbs on your bearskin rug at home, God the Father looks out of his window and sends a second flood. Sergeant, troopers, musketeers, all will have to drown, while we, before a brisk wind, sail into Paradise.

I’m a bright fire that blazes from the green-garlanded cliff, the sea-wind’s my lover, who, asking me to pirouette, comes in his inconstant way: madly rising, gently falling, I turn on him my tongues of flame: come not near me, or I’ll burn you!

Where the wild streams roar, and the palm trees soar up, when the hidden hunters listen, many a deer goes lonely by. I am a deer, leaping over the rubble, over the mountains, where in the snow the farthest peaks shimmer quietly, do not follow, you shall never catch me!

I am a little bird in the air, winging over the blue sea, here no arrow, shot from chasms, can reach me through the clouds, and the meadows and rocks, lonely woods left far, far behind, have vanished beneath the waves— Ah, I have lost my way!